I’m only a year late in sharing this news here…. I’ve joined the great many writers who are now producing newsletters (and other content, though for now I’m just focused on the newsletters) on Substack. Given how much growth there has been on that platform in recent years, I have a feeling most of you have likely at least heard of Substack, if not already subscribe to a newsletter or two. Or twelve. Or a few dozen, as I do.

With Seafood Savvy I have a few different goals:

  • to branch out from the heavy emphasis on shellfish that I’ve had with my last three books (Shellfish, Oysters and Crab), giving me a chance to explore and write about a broad range of shellfish and finfish, plus the quickly-growing arena of seaweeds (about which I have quite a lot to learn)
  • to get into themes that go beyond the types of content I usually have in cookbooks; I definitely include recipes and loop in information about shopping for seafood, species info and other practical culinary elements, but also touch on seafood-related travel (rather frequently), interesting products, retro reminiscences, conversations with people in the business, fun seafood events, whatever other angles strike my fancy in the seafood realm
  • to create more dynamic engagement with readers! I hope that the newsletter format of brief and relatively frequent issues will create opportunity for a bit more dialog, not just me and a one-way conversation; comments below each issue allow folks to chime in answering a question posed in the issue, so we can share notes with each other about some of our favorite things in the world of seafood.

There is a great deal of interesting food-related content on Substack, but I was interested to see how very little seafood-related subject matter I found when initially considering this new venture. And a year-plus since I did that first searching, there’s still not a lot more. I think mine is still the only fully-seafood-focused newsletter, aside from this one that’s focused specifically on tinned seafoods. It’d been slow to build a readership but I’m convinced there are plenty of people out there who’d enjoy and benefit from the things I’m covering.

As for the frequency, that’s been, shall we say, fluid. When I launched last September I’d hoped to send a newsletter out every two weeks. That didn’t work out, so it’s been more like once a month, though my goal is still to get to an every-two-weeks groove at some point in this second year of Seafood Savvy. It’s not for lack of ideas about what to write!! For now, when you sign up you’re sure to get at least one newsletter per month, extra perhaps now and then.

And while many Substacks have a paid subscription model of some kind (whether paid-only or a hybrid offering both paid and free subscriptions, often with different content for each), for now mine is fully free. That may change in the future, but for now I’ll just be very happy to have you sign up at this link and join the community of seafood fans (and those at least curious to learn more). I have a lot of fun sharing my enthusiasm for all things seafood, and doing what I can to help make enjoying seafood at home as easy as possible.

On the home page for the newsletter (you can either subscribe there or hit ‘no thanks’ to have a look first), you’ll find links to the 15 issues I’ve published so far, I hope you’ll traipse through at least a few of them to catch up a bit on the varied content. All by one of them includes at least one recipe, as well, some ideas to play around with in your kitchen.

A couple favorite issues include No. 12: Hitting the Grill (you can guess what that’s about, a simple grilled trout fillet recipe with herb-olive salad in that one), No. 3: Simple Pleasures (a trip to Puerto Vallarta, storing shellfish, steamed clams) and No. 11: A Love of the Sea (reflecting on a couple other sea-oriented trips, visit to a Portuguese cannery and a simple halibut-radish recipe).

Even if you have just the slightest curiosity about seafood, I hope you’ll subscribe!